Preventing Oakland hills fire risks — one French broom pull at a time

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East Bay Regional Park District Director Dee Rosario carries an arm full of French broom for disposal after uprooting the invasive, perennial shrub during a March 17 service project on the Montclair Railroad Trail in the Oakland hills. (Darin Moriki/For Bay Area News Group)

OAKLAND — It’s not hard to mistake French broom for an ornamental plant at first blush, with its yellow flowers, evergreen leaflets and slender branches.

But some Oakland hills residents know there’s more than meets the eye.

They see the shrub as an invasive pest that can endanger their neighborhoods by becoming fast fuel for wildfires.

“It grows like crazy,” Wendy Tokuda, of Montclair, said of the French broom, which has gained a foothold on steep hillside slopes in her neighborhood. “It gets really dry in the summer, and because of the structure of the plant, it’s like tinder on a bush. This firefighter once told me that it’s like fire torch once it gets lit, and it has the ability to carry the fire up a tree.”

Tokuda, the retired Bay Area TV anchor, was among the nearly 30 Oakland hills residents who pulled patches of French broom on March 17 along sections of the 1.5-mile Montclair Railroad Trail. The monthly cleanup, organized by the Friends of the Montclair Railroad Trail, Friends of Sausal Creek, and Oakland Firesafe Council, is part of a longtime, grassroots effort to gain an upper hand on the perennial plant.

“We periodically do these (French) broom pulls because it’s labor intensive — you have to do it by hand — and it’s the perfect time to do it, particularly with the rains, since the soil is soft and it’s easy to pull them out,” Oakland Firesafe Council President Sue Piper said at the March 17 cleanup.

Sue Duckles, of the Butters Canyon Conservancy, pulls French broom during a March 17, 2018 service project on the Montclair Railroad Trail in the Oakland hills. (Darin Moriki/For Bay Area News Group)

Similar French broom curtailing efforts also are being spearheaded by a number of organizations in Redwood Regional Park, Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve and Huckleberry Botanic Regional Preserve and other East Bay open space areas, Tokuda said.

“We need to work with each other because we all have the save the same goal, even though we may be in different geographical areas,” Piper said. “Many of us are on several boards and committees, and we’ve got to know each other over the years, but we work together because it’s important; it’s like a barn raising.”

French broom commonly grows up to 10 feet tall and can produce more than 8,000 seeds each year, according to the Berkeley-based California Invasive Plant Council. The shrub, native to Mediterranean countries, the Azores, and the Canary Islands, “displaces native plant and forage species, and makes reforestation difficult,” according to the environmental advocacy nonprofit’s website.

It is believed that French broom was introduced to the Bay Area in the mid-1800s for its ornamental qualities but has spread along coastal areas, from Monterey County to Mendocino County, as well as inland regions, including Lake, Solano and Contra Costa counties.

Oakland’s Public Works Department, however, does not have as much money as it did in past years to manage vegetation removal efforts in fire-prone, hillside neighborhoods, Tokuda said. Part of the problem, she said, can be traced back to the 2017 dissolution of the city-backed Wildfire Prevention Assessment District, which funded initiatives to reduce fire risks in a 16.5-square-mile area between Berkeley and San Leandro.

Oakland hillside property owners voted in January 2004 to create the assessment district for 10 years but rejected a 2013 effort to renew it. At the time, the parcel tax measure was approved by 66.3 percent of voters, just 66 votes short of the 66.6 percent needed to pass it.

Assessment district initiatives continued until June 2017, when all money collected until 2014 was spent. At least $177,297 was set aside for the city’s vegetation management efforts during the assessment district’s final fiscal year, which ended on June 30, 2017.

Those vegetation management initiatives, such as cutting French broom, are now funded by the city’s general fund.

Volunteers are now stepping up more to address glaring funding gaps in the city’s vegetation abatement services. Tokuda, who has been pulling French broom for the past 12 years, said the shrub’s roots grow deeper and branch systems become more complex when the plants are cut and not uprooted, she said.

“If the city of Oakland is out of money and we know we live in a fire zone, we need to clear out what is called fuel load, and that’s what this is,” Tokuda said.

“This is the kind of stuff that makes the fires burn so intensely,” she said.

Jeff Kahn, from the Friends of the Montclair Railroad Trail, said the hard work and elbow grease from volunteers has started to pay off over time. The March 17 cleanup alone generated about 35 cubic yards of French broom that needed to be destroyed, city gardener crew leader Keary Brink said.

“We each have different resources that we can tap into, so sometimes it’s helpful to collaborate so we can get them all amassed at one time,” Kahn said.

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